Wilson Center Experts

Maria N. Todorova

Related Content for this Expert

In this paper the author aims to demonstrate how and why myths are created and what political, ethical, or other ideological purposes they can be made to serve. In her overall project, "Demographic patterns and Family structure in Nineteenth-century Bulgaria" (which is outlined in detail in Appendix 1), she aims at empirical research whose ultimate and modest value would be to attempt to fill in some of the blank spots of the social history of this specific region. more

In the geographical and political classification after World War II, a portion of the Balkans secured an unobtrusive place as part of a common Eastern Europe perceived by the West as a homogeneous appendix of the Soviet Union; another portion was willingly included in Western Europe, something that would have been inconceivable under any circumstance other than the prevailing anti-Communist paranoia. In the Balkans themselves, the feeling of a certain Balkan commonality was pushed aside but never entirely submerged, and the priority of the self-designation and orientation followed an East-West axis. This paper discusses the implications of such a dynamic in light of the disappearance of a bipolar world. more

In the geographical and political classification after World War II, a portion of the Balkans secured an unobtrusive place as part of a common Eastern Europe perceived by the West as a homogeneous appendix of the Soviet Union; another portion was willingly included in Western Europe, something that would have been inconceivable under any circumstance other than the prevailing anti-Communist paranoia. In the Balkans themselves, the feeling of a certain Balkan commonality was pushed aside but never entirely submerged, and the priority of the self-designation and orientation followed an East-West axis. This paper discusses the implications of such a dynamic in light of the disappearance of a bipolar world.

In this paper the author aims to demonstrate how and why myths are created and what political, ethical, or other ideological purposes they can be made to serve. In her overall project, "Demographic patterns and Family structure in Nineteenth-century Bulgaria" (which is outlined in detail in Appendix 1), she aims at empirical research whose ultimate and modest value would be to attempt to fill in some of the blank spots of the social history of this specific region.